print.htmlTable ignores useViewer = TRUE

[lemna]

Hi Max,

I can't get htmlTable to use the RStudio viewer pane anymore (version 1.9). The class of a htmlTable object is now "html" "htmlTable" "character" Everything works fine after manually setting the class to "htmlTable" "character". Is it possible that the fix for issue #26 caused this?

thanks
Peter.

[gforge]

Hi Peter,

yes, that was the fix for issue #26. I like when the table appears inside the notebook and adding the html-class seemed to do the job. This was a bummer though. Any suggestions on how to address this?

/Max

[lemna]

Hi Max,

I've got a clumsy workaround using the rstudioapi package, but I think the long-term solution should be provided by an environment parameter in rstudio or knitr (as you've been asking for, apparently).

I can do a PR tonight if you're still interested in the workaround.

Peter.

[gforge]

Awesome. It seems like it may take a while before the rstudio team has time to fix this. I should probably post an rstudio issue

[gforge]

Thanks, excellent work as always. I'll post it to CRAN in a few days. I don't think any unit tests are possible here and the previous viewer code was untested.

[gforge]

Hi Peter,

Just noticed I often don't use the html_notebook but frequently the Gmisc::docx_document, my current thoughts are:

• For new files we retain the current structure
• Detect the path and look if it's has an Rmd file-ending: grepl("\\.Rmd$", rstudioapi::getActiveDocumentContext()$path)
• Add an option for escaping notebook in the yaml header + a general option options(htmlTable.skip_notebook = TRUE)

What are your thoughts on this?

[lemna]

Hi Max,

I avoided parsing the filename as path is NULL for files that haven't been saved yet. That is common in my workflow: create a file, try out the tables interactively, save after a while if everything works as expected. What do you want docx_document to do? It's a wrapper around html_document, so is the current behavior (use viewer in interactive use instead of inline display) not what you want it to do?

The problem with a general option is that a user might switch between different types of markdown files during a session. You would need to be able to reset that option when focus changes, but AFAIK RStudio does not provide hooks. In the absence of a way to detect where code is submitted from you will always need to parse the active document to detect what the user intended, I'm afraid.

edit: Totally forgot that this is also influenced by the global RStudio option - "show output inline for all markdown documents." htmlTable should respect this, of course. It seems that it is readable through an undocumented method.

Peter.

[gforge]

Thanks Peter, I've updated the package and fixed a few minor bugs and moved the Rmd detection to a private function since your PR:

prIsNotebook <- function() {
  if (!rstudioapi::isAvailable()) {
    return(FALSE)
  }

  ctxt <- rstudioapi::getActiveDocumentContext()
  if (grepl("\\.Rmd$", ctxt$path)) {
    return(TRUE)
  }

  # Look for html_notebook within the header if the file hasn't been saved
  contents <- ctxt$contents
  header <- grep("^---$", contents)
  if (length(header) == 2) {
    return(any(grepl("html_notebook$",
                     contents[min(header) : max(header)])))
  }

  return(FALSE)
}

I think this is a reasonable compromise until further. The thought of having an Rcmd check note feels like less appealing as the folks at CRAN won't like it. Although I think one can add globalVariables(".rs.readUiPref") in order to avoid this error.

[gforge]

Oh forgot, the docx_document is a wrapper around html_document and creates output that has the same color, font etc as a standard Word-docx document. I'm stuck with using Word for my manuscripts and then I want to just copy-paste the document without any hassle.

I think our workflow is rather similar. I just found that trying out tables within the document is even easier than viewing them through the Viewer since many tables relate to the information in the previous table.

I think that a single option is enough for now. Having a document-specific options seems like overdoing it although one could add a vector of filenames that are searched.

[lemna]

It doesn't work for me though. If code is submitted from a .Rmd file the function returns TRUE without running the notebook detection part.
Also, this ignores the user's preference setting - would you reconsider the globalVariables(".rs.readUIPref") approach?

[gforge]

In my case I sometimes have child documents that are of Rmd type but don't have a yaml intro. It seems that this requires relying on the file path for it to work since I can't deduce it from the context I'm in.

We can use .rs.readUiPref("rmd_chunk_output_inline") but currently it seems to always be NULL when I try it in regular docs and in notebook - are you sure the setting name is rmd_chunk_output_inline?

[lemna]

I hadn't considered child documents, but as you say these will always have a non-NULL path. The current develop version does not work for html_document - it returns TRUE before evaluating the notebook detection code.

I am using RStudio version 1.0.136 - I can read the preference from the console, from within a .Rmd html_document and from a html_notebook.

[lemna]

Another complication to consider: according to the Rmd specification it is possible to specify multiple output formats in a single yaml header. I think the only correct way forward is to find a way to determine which hook knitr will use to print something. All other solutions will make somebody unhappy.

[gforge]

Found these similar issues:

• No effect for knitr_print functions within notebooks rstudio/rmarkdown#964
• asis handling inconsistancies rstudio/rmarkdown#895

I use 1.0.136 but neither the Windows nor the Linux version provide any useful output.